The issue.
--
James Lyons and
Wm. H. Macfarland are the competing candidates for Congress.
The one of the other will be certainly elected.
There are other candidates, but the issue had been made up before they announced themselves.
You may prefer some one of them, but to vote for either is to evade a choice between
Lyons and
Macfarland.
Which of these two will you choose?
That is practically the only question you have to determine now.
The recent course of
Mr. Macfarland in the
Convention, and, as far as we are informed about it, in the Provisional Congress, is legitimately and unavoidably before the people of this district.
His position as a candidate for Congress challenges a popular verdict of approval or disapproval.
He voted in the
Convention against the preamble to the Ordinance of Secession, approving the reserved sovereignty of the people of
Virginia, and their right to resume the powers they had granted to a corrupt and faith loss Government.
He voted against the suspension of interest on the public debt in the hands of the enemy and would have taxed the resources of the
Commonwealth to contribute of these balance of our people to enlarge the available resources of Yankeedom.
He voted against the expulsion of some of the recreant members of the
Convention from the
Northwest after their disloyalty had been made potent in acts as well as words, while at the very time they were lending every effort to subjugate
Virginia and counselling, in the event of failure, dismemberment of the
Commonwealth.
Men of
Richmond, When these votes were given,
Mr. Macfarland was speaking for you. Every body knows that you did not approve them then.
Have your heads grown sick and your hearts grown faint in the progress of this struggle?
Will you endorse these obnoxious loses by again empowering
Mr. Macfarland to misrepresent you?
Confiding in your loyalty, by the common consent of your Southern brethren, the
Executive of the
Confederacy has domiciled itself among you.
You justified that confidence by deputing as your Representative the lamented
Tyler.--Is
Mr. Macfarland an appropriate successor to him?
You have recently manifested your repugnance to him as your representative, and it is very certain that you will do it again.
Yet he may he elected in spite of your opposition by division of the vote among several competitors.
Mr. Lyons is known to sympathize fully with the sentiment of the district, and would have been elected over
Mr. Macfarland at the previous election it the contest had been simply between them.
He is now
Mr. Macfarland's only formidable competitor, and not to vote for him is to cast, half a vote for
Mr. Macfarland.
Rally, men, around him. It is no time to indulge your friends in the cold compliment of uneffactual votes.
James Lyons desires your support.
He is and has always been bound to the core, and will faithfully and worthily represent the feelings and sentiments of
te 1--1t*
Virginia.
